Abstract

Visibility plays a crucial role in sustainable supply chains. A sustainable supply chain is a system of stakeholders, information, and resources involved in flow of a good or service from supplier to customer with considerations for the environment, society and economic performance. In those chains, visibility concept captures the extent to which actors within a sustainable supply chain have access to, or share, mutually benefiting information that is key or useful to their operations and supports decision making taking into cognizance the three-bottom line of economic, social and environment. Support for improved sustainable supply chain is increasing, particularly in the areas of technological advances. This paper focuses on blockchain technology and explores the characteristics of sustainable supply chain visibility and those of blockchains.  Key blockchain characteristics found in the literature and those of the sustainable supply chain visibility characteristics were highlighted. The relation between blockchain and sustainable supply chain characteristics were then explored.  The results show that sustainable supply chain visibility is multifaceted and can be characterized around green absorptive capacity, green dynamic capabilities, and context. The blockchain characteristics that help support visibility in sustainable supply chains can be aligned to the sustainable supply chain visibility characteristics discussed.